Confini netti e sfumati tra il sé e l’‘altro’: La prospettiva ‘altra’ della scrittrice rom Ceija Stojka

Abstract

Ceija Stojka, a Roma author who was born and lived in Austria and survived the porrajmos, began publishing her writings some decades after her experience of the concentration camps to express the horrors she experienced first-hand. In her autobiographical writings, Stojka does not only talk about her two years as an inmate in Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen, but also about her life before and after the war. While there is a strong need to write in order to bear witness to the experience and to process her trauma, her texts are also a journey into Roma history and into the most hidden spaces of her identity, that of her family and her people. His reflections often dwell on the contact with the majority society and the society’s perception of the Roma. The confrontation with the so-called gagé (non-Roma) helps to add extra pieces of identity and to highlight not only the differences, but also – beyond all stereotypes and categorizations – the similarities between human beings.